BODYGUARD -light strikes.

[philevans]

S&W bodyguard on night stand.
i shoot the 2 loaded magazines of 90gr hornaday critical defense at the range as soon as i get there -
it's to demonstrate reliability.
the filled magazines have sat for about a month
during the last 2 outings with bodyguard -
i had light strikes in two different magazines after the first round fired in each of the magazines.
very small dimple on cartridge primer.
both fired on the second trigger strike.

is this a striker problem ?

 

[DanielF]

Unfortunately it seems to just be the way the Bodyguards are. I've seen several guys having problems with light primer strikes. I don't think Smith has found a good balance between decent trigger pull and reliability yet. The light strikes are the main reason why I haven't started carrying one yet. Hope they sort it out soon. Great gun other than that.

 

[Mcwsky09]

I've had some, but I have also installed some Galloway Precison parts. On my last outing it seemed that if I staged the trigger and did a very slow careful drop of the hammer I was more likely to have light strikes whereas a quick snap of the trigger was far less likely to have a light strike at the cost of lower accuracy.

- update - not to the issue but just adding some info - the kit I got from Galloway did seem to be binding a bit and I had to remove the paint from the transfer bar to get it to work properly but I doubt that is a factor - the reason I installed that kit was that I was having a hard time getting the hammer to fall at all with the stock parts. Had light strikes so also installed the Galloway main and firing pin springs and the result is what I posted above - still some light strikes that seemed to be related to how quickly I pulled the trigger - though that could have been at least in part my imagination.

one day soon I will take some good factory brass ammo and do a bit of testing to rule out things like my reloads (especially primers, both hardness and seating depth) and aluminum case as possibly factors. Might even restore all the factory parts for comparison. (I have been reloading for a bit over a year and have had a few cases with 9mm and 40 with light strikes as well - or hard primers - but maybe one out of every couple hundred compared to one out of 25 with the Bodyguard 380). I have had a couple people fire it with all the mods who have experience with stock BG380 and they all say it is vastly improved with the Galloway upgrades.

I did buy it to be my carry gun but might replace it with a Shield 9 I just bought after I put that through its paces and get a good holster. Maybe make the 380 a backup gun if I ever decide to carry two at the same time.